


Razwan Bahir's Primary Arc - Headcanons, Assorted

by Domimagetrix



Series: Razwan Bahir, World Guardian [1]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Magic, Razarc DLC, headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-06-14 05:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15381993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: An array of headcanons relevant to Razwan's 'verse, including magic, flora, fauna, languages, social and geographical ideas, and - in time - whether or not Azzanadra has actually sat on one of his hat ears and thought deep purple thoughts.





	1. On Magic in Razwan's Story

Something I love from a gameplay perspective is Runescape’s broad magic application. How human usage of it is powered - and limited - by runes.

Want to pick something up from a distance, transporting it to your hand? Telegrab. Need to get somewhere in a hurry? Prior to the lodestone network and the expediting of its usage with vis wax, teleportation spells took you wherever you needed to be at speed. From curing your diseased farming patches to preventing another’s teleporting away from you in the Wilderness, if you’ve got the runes and the levels, conveniences abound.

For the most part, utility spells like the ones mentioned above stay true to game form in Razwan’s primary story arc. Telegrab is one I relegated to very specific operating conditions and made _appallingly_ easy to disrupt, since leaving it as inexorable as it is in canon would render thieves unstoppable. Lunar spells all still do as they do, and the same holds true for most - perhaps all - of the others with little or no fighting purpose in mind.

A fact for the entirety of Runescape’s combat history: magic is overpowered. 4taa (four-tick auto attack) alone makes it the most potent style for DPS (damage per second, or “deeps.”) Ancient magic held sway on all sorts of PvP and PvM battlefields with lifesteal or immobilizing effects that spread over a significant area. With the introduction and refinement of EoC (Evolution of Combat), both Ancient and normal spellbook magic have been the go-to in virtually any combat scenario, save a very small selection of enemies programmed exclusively vulnerable to one of the other two styles.

And that creates a problem for the kind of story I want to tell. Magic is often overpowered. Nebulous. It’s a fucknormous blast of “clamp yer buttholes shut, me hearties, ‘cause a storm’s coming in!” no matter the element. Entities can be designated susceptible to a particular element, but all (save perhaps those found in Desert Treasure, RfD, Chronozon, and Dagannoth Mother) will fall to any spell type so long as the level’s within a respectable rage of the ideal. Don’t feel like switching your fire runes for water? No big deal. Your accuracy is already ridiculous by virtue of style choice.

It works given some other changes introduced by EoC, but leaving magic as this unquantified uber-force against which almost none can defend doesn’t sit well with me for Raz’s tale. By the standards of the game, Nomad _should_ be impossible for anyone to defeat, and would certainly be for a melee fighter like Razwan. Magic-wielders are only at a slight disadvantage against rangers despite the ostensible balance of the combat triangle. It has almost no limitations set upon it. It’s a Visa card for most anywhere you want to be, provided you’ve got a few hundred thousand gold pieces to blow on basic elemental runes. Were Nomad updated to fight the way a player does, with levels hinted at in Dishonour Among Thieves, he’d be undefeated to this day. We’d stand no chance. He’d make 4,000% enraged Telos shit an anima Costco brick by brick.

Which, again, as things stand for the game and how it actually functions? S’good. For writing the story I want to write? Not good. Magic _can’t_ be that all-encompassing, or Raz (not to mention any other melee or ranged fighter) is quantum-turbo-boned. Gielinor becomes free real estate for whichever takeover-minded mages rest atop the magical food chain. The God Wars would’ve been decided by quantity and quality of mages.

I don’t dig ambiguous magical dimensions in storytelling. A little mystery is fine, but too often magic becomes loud, flashy, obnoxious, and a blurry deus ex machina leaving the audience with more questions than they had at the start. The first go-’round of Razfic was riddled with it, both because I was trying to shoehorn my worldbuild into it rather than treating it as a separate project and because, well… I was new. New to writing, new to fan fiction, new to the fandom. I saw loads of “but CANON and if you deviate from CANON in more than the bare minimum you’re DOING IT WRONG.” Now, if I see a gap or something that doesn’t fit what I want to write, it gets tweaked. Fuck canon. I’ll respect what’s done well and impacts the world, respect the characters in it, but won’t sacrifice the tale I want to tell in deference to an information gap, rushed design, or mechanics intended solely for the game.

So, for Raz’s arc, I decided to define magic. Give each elemental style some individuality, and to expand on some of the mechanics of a few. What they do, what they don’t do, and why.

For specificity, these aren’t my headcanons about how magic works in canon. It’s just an expansion pack that comes with my storyline.

And it goes a lil’ somethin’ like this:

I picture magic itself as having a more or less electrical format. It _isn’t_ electricity, but has some similar behavior and physicality when directed. Undirected or uncharged, it’s just a static, imperceptible miasma of potential that exists everywhere. Some beings - like demons - can manipulate and charge it without runes. For humans (save some very bizarre and limited exceptions), casting either doesn’t happen - or doesn’t happen for long - without them.

Runes themselves operate like an oversimplified immune system when activated.

Rune: “Hey, you, building block stuff - be _this_ so you can fight _[rattling paper with image of pathogen on it]_ this thing.”  
Magic: “Yeah, dope, I’m on it.”

Runes imprint magic with the qualities of their element(s) before that magic is directed by the focus and understanding of the mage. In the process, the inherent small dose of charged magic inside a rune is depleted, and the tiny (perhaps nickel-sized) pebble crumbles like good feta.

I also set things up so different elementally-charged magics interact uniquely with the world, having taken on certain traits relevant to the element in question. “Melee armor is always bad, ranged armor is always good for defense” isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.

Right. To the types:

 

…………

 

 **Air:** This the first I tweaked. It's still air magic, but the danger of the thing rests in a contest of wills between the caster and target. Rune requirements for spells deviate from what they are in game - air spells beyond “here, have an almighty breeze” need both air and mind runes to function. In a similar manner to how I’ve rethought blood magic, you can do it without the mind runes for a little bit, but more than a cast or two and the next stage is one fuck of an Excedrin Headache. Farther still and you can give yourself brain damage.  
  
An air mage can toss blasts and concentrated streams with air runes, but that doesn't really do much besides knocking a motherfucker around. (This is also the first deviation from the standard in-game combat triangle - the heavier your armor, the better off you are.)

The contest of wills is reactionary for the target - as an example, a mage can compress/constrict air around a person. The victim feels resistance against movement and can’t breathe. However, it lasts a bit the way things like Asphyxiate ability last - a mage can't "hold" the air indefinitely because it’s akin to a strength exercise rather than endurance. They can conceivably keep it going long enough to knock the target unconscious or truly asphyxiate them to death, but the other person's self-control (think the Freedom in-game ability) can counteract it.  
  
A target’s best bet is to stay calm, because struggling/panicking lends intensity to the hold and can even extend the duration. Calm lends no fuel to the mind part of the spell, no extra duration or power. (Kinda analogous to the way someone underwater who's calm uses less oxygen than someone who's panicking and causing their blood to race/oxygen to be depleted.) Air magic is a considerable threat to the unprepared, but a practiced opponent can weather it out, waiting until the air mage has expended themselves and move in while they’re recovering.

 **Fire:** This is the first blunt motherfucker of the lot - conducts swiftly through metal, but insulating materials are highly effective. About as true to the combat triangle as you can get. It’s magic made an accelerating force for particles and heat. Spells have an orange-yellow cast to them, lacking the more concrete look of fire until they actually encounter some kinda flammable object or run into something they can heat up. Metal brightens as though placed in a forge. Clothes, wood, and hair become fuel for the actual expression of fire. It’s just damage, my dudes.

A lot of ranged gear is made out of dragonhide or imbued cloth of some sort, so the ranger’s advantage is strong here.

 **Water:** Given a path to focus on and a great deal of time, water will wear into damned near anything. Topsoil. Stone, even.

While a water mage can certainly draw water from an existing body of it and toss it here or there, that’s more an inconvenience in the immediacy of battle the way an air mage catapulting wind at you is heavily reliant on situation to be in any way dangerous.

The danger with them isn’t whether or not they have existing water nearby, but the fact that they manipulate magic into a supercharged version of water. Spells erode substances. Rapidly. What might’ve taken thousands of years for natural water to do to armor, a spell of ‘water’-styled magic can manage in seconds.

What this means in terms of defensive wear: neither melee nor ranged gear hold up in the face of it. If you’re going to wear armor at all, the best protection you can get is by wearing more magic gear. Imbued cloth or other materials where magic is a strong component. Even then, the resistance to that erosion isn’t perfect; a couple more spells will wear that away pretty quickly, too.

Unfortunately, magic ‘water’ loses most of its erosive ability when it brushes up against anything comprised of a goodish portion of its natural counterpart. A water mage can do away with your armor, but - once that armor’s gone - they aren’t particularly threatening because people are mostly water. Water mages tend to pair up with a more directly offensive magician (or split their specialization with another element type) to finish the job.

 **Earth:** Is all about taking magic miasma and “grounding” it, or turning it into temporary substance and hurling that shit at a target. It’s not a particularly finesse-heavy branch of magic, but earth mages are your go-to if you don’t have the muscle power among your forces (or the tech) to break through walls.

Defensively, this puts us closer to the in-game mechanic, at least to a degree. The lighter your armor, the faster you can dodge. However, the heavier your armor, the bigger the hit you can take if you’re not one built for dodging. Which is better depends on the aptitude and strength of the earth mage in question - if they’re tossing big stuff, you want to get out of the way in a hurry. Smaller projectiles you can weather better in a sturdy plate.

 **Smoke:** This is pretty much what’s on the tin. Basic magic becomes physical in a gaseous form. It’s difficult to breathe, obscures vision, and a protracted stay in a cloud of it is very bad for your health. The gaseous “particles” are kinda sticky, too, collecting in the throat, lungs, and staying there until the spell itself dissipates.

This isn’t handy for swift killing, but - on the upside - it’s easy to maintain for longer than most other magic types. You might not die quickly to it, but you _are_ going to die if you don’t disrupt a smoke mage. They can keep it up for quite some time. Neither style of armor is particularly effective. To the target’s benefit, a smoke mage can’t be particularly mobile or their hold on the miasma ceases. Knock them off-balance or force movement, and suddenly, “AIR!”

 **Ice:** Is the other mean one, and a sister element to fire. Whereas the latter is magic used as a force to accelerate particles and produce heat, ice slows things down. It conducts quickly through metal, too, so your melee fighter is at a similar disadvantage. Rangers do have the traditional advantage, although more insulation underneath that leather or hide is ideal.

It shares a small natural water-manipulating quality; a puddle can swiftly be molded and made an ice prison or weapon. Water and ice mages frequently double up on proficiencies to make it more durable, although with that doubling up comes a less comprehensive ability with each individually. Ice in the physical (be it with natural water or a creation and manipulation of magic “water”) has a comparatively brief lifespan, so it must do its damage quickly. Prisons are likewise brief - more a stopgap measure between initial encounter and enacting a better plan to incapacitate the target.

 **Blood:** literally draws from the blood of an opponent as well as runes of its namesake. In this case, magic isn’t manipulated _into_ blood, but is used to manipulate existing blood. Coagulation behavior is represented in slowed conduction in metal (but counterbalanced by ignoring some of the buffer of ranged-based armor materials.) It's a like-calls-to-like deal, the nature of the magic seeking its own in the blood of the opponent, arresting/moving/hardening it and drawing it out of the person (with difficulty if they're not already wounded, but if they're bleeding, the mage becomes extremely effective.) Blood mages seek exposed areas of an opponent or open wounds rather than creating those wounds.

The "healing" aspect of those spells comes from the excess of the blood-molding magic being force-returned to the sender (mage), like salt collecting at the bottom of water because that water is already hypersaturated with it. It helps the mage's own wounds clot over and triggers extra production in the caster's marrow for quicker replacement of any lost blood. This effect doesn’t come without cost, however - the body’s own resources are depleted rapidly to fuel the heightened production.

Blood type doesn't matter - the magic just recognizes/manipulates the universal building blocks of it, although conditions like anemia make it more effective if the opponent's anemic, less so if the mage happens to be. Casting blood magic sans runes can be done, but you're drawing from your own, and you can damage the fuck out of your own system temporarily/permanently if you do it for long. (Hence why Nomad’s veins are so dark and visually prominent according to Raz-’verse. Nomad went through a blood magic phase, got cocky, and fucked himself up a bit before it occurred to him to maybe stop doing that. Smooth, Quen. Very smooth.)

 **Shadow:** as an offensive magic - is an acceleration of the movement between the “real” world and the Shadow Realm. It’s a concentrated blast (ha!) form of a shadow mage’s ability to traverse the boundary between real world and Realm, magic that sluices rapidly back into that Realm like water seeking its level. It doesn't have long-term presence in the "real world" because it isn’t _of_ the real world.

All of it is ultimately derived from the Shadow Realm's heart, the maelstrom that exists there as a counterpart to anima. (I love the idea of shadow magic being anima’s dark profile the way the Realm itself is to Gielinor.) When it does hit, it's actually drawing the particles of the object/person and dragging them to the Shadow Realm. It can fuck you up, but it doesn't have the durability to just vaporize unless it's just an enormous, focused concentration of it to someone unequipped with protective gear. Both kinds of armor (conductive and insulating) are effective against it since it's the sole type that outrightly defies the electrical format. Is it made of matter? Then it's protective. It's more a force being manipulated between planes than usage of the static magic potential of Gielinor.

 **Soul:** Is, at least for the purpose of this ‘verse, the most dangerous of offensive magics. Armor is irrelevant, whether durable or magic-imbued, because a soul mage isn’t interested in harm to either that or the body of the target. Nothing they do targets a person in a physical sense, but seeks to either disrupt the configuration of a soul to separate it from the body (Nomad) or draw out the fundamental essence of the soul while leaving the framework in place (Oreb.)

The downside of soul magic: it’s heavily equipment-reliant for offense. Obelisks or siphons, difficult to construct or obtain, are required to both accumulate the necessary soul essence and to store any significant amount of it. A soul mage is generally only dangerous on their home turf; if an offensive blast is cast, the mage must either draw from a reservoir or - as with air and blood magic - from their own (typically) limited reserve while risking themselves.

The highest guarantee of success where soul magic is concerned is through knocking the soul free of its physical framework or depleting it of its energy. Blasts cast at a target are generally an “oh shit I’m not at home what the fuck do I do?” panic move, dangerous in that they can knock the target’s soul off its framework if they hit, not so dangerous in that they’re fairly easy to dodge and the caster will almost always have a limited supply of raw material to cast with. While siphoning attacks don’t require them, blasts do require soul runes in addition to the raw energy expended.

(On souls) I headcanon them as jellyfish-esque. Mostly “water” (raw soul energy) with a very thin husk operating the whole works and giving the soul its individual arrangement. “Ties” are their only means of being tethered to the physically concrete body, with tendrils extending to head, chest/heart, hands, feet, and groin area. Some are limited to these, others have additional, smaller tethers that make its bond to the body stronger and more difficult to disrupt.

 **Medmagic:** This is pure headcanon and has nothing to do with any in-game spells or magical concepts, including support spells. It’s also the singular type of magic that requires neither runes nor any sort of sacrifice on the part of the caster. Also uniquely - it cannot be learned without first having a genetically-inherited ability to tap into it. None are born prodigies, and so in order to be in any way adept with it, a medmage must either learn from one who’s done the trial-and-error process of learning or slog through that process and learn it themselves.

Like blood magic, the target’s own resources are used in the repair, proteins and other fuels being redirected forcibly to speed-heal broken bones or damaged tissues. A target needs to be still, no longer exercising anything around the damaged area, and medmagic has a “laying on of hands” limitation that means no distance-casting.

 

\----------

 

And there you have it - the basic magic deal according to Razwan’s primary arc. Hopefully I struck a good balance of putting some boundaries on it while not depriving magic of its… “magic.” Sits pretty well in my head for her tale, although there’s probably room to refine and adjust as the arc goes on (and is expanded backward.)

 **A few notes** : There are no “magical prodigies” in this arc. I loathe the “magical prodigy” thing intensely - to take something as often overpowered as combat magic and afford a character effortless mastery over it bypasses so much of what makes combat exciting, the risk made nil, the character become a narrative land mine. It undermines the concept of combat as being risky even in the process of training, too - whatever minimal “training” takes place is often abrupt, has an unsatisfyingly speedy/mistake-free duration, and teaches the character nothing of caution or respect for skills honed over the course of years. In the case of humans, it also erases the fact that they’re almost always a very mundane, common race within a fantasy world, and that becoming a force to be reckoned with would require dedication and a commitment to excelling.

It also removes any sense of accomplishment on both training field and battlefield. There are no threats. There are no humbling failures to teach moderation and strategy. There’s no _learning,_ not in any real sense. No risk, no real reward. Some may take to the learning process with more intuition than others in the same way someone with a naturally athletic build might find some elements of physical training marginally easier, but to hand a character everything with no real opportunity to _earn_ it means either: the character will blow effortlessly through every fight, or some one-shot “failure” or “susceptibility” will be patched on and look every bit as jarringly inorganic as it is. With prodigies, the inevitable gap between their understanding of difficulty and that of a non-prodigy is often never explored, or other characters relegated to background noise/fawning fans of the prodigy, and the personality flaws that would inevitably create would also go unacknowledged.

Unless canon is discarded entirely, there is already no full-out failure where the “big bads” are concerned. Game-wise, there’s no real drawback for failing save some coinage from your pouch upon “death.” A big part of what invests me in a character is how they overcome the less-than-ideal successes, learning to adapt to changes in their psychology and physiology, their efforts and failures in that regard made relatable. I want Razwan to be relatable, and for her opponents of the magic-wielding persuasion to be relatable, so the prodigy thing is out the window.

So, like, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Don’t forget to drink some water.


	2. On Kebbits and Unicorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mood ring furballs and Hellicorns.

Kebbits:

 

I headcanon them as having developed empathic ability as a survival mechanism, directly as a result of their exposure to humans.

Most varieties were already equipped with physical traits designed to handle predators of the non-human persuasion. Barb-tails, sabretooth, and a few others employ defensive arsenals as their names suggest. Most also benefit from fur and hide colors intended to blend in with the natural environment. These traits, along with their burrowing ability, help keep their communities safe from kyatts and birds of prey.

However, none of these things are particularly useful against humans, as that particular predator doesn't tend toward overtly violent means of hunting. No matter how sharp of tooth or claw, or how well a kebbit might camouflage themselves in snow or muddy terrain, these things don't prevent them from falling prey to the human method of laying traps.

Before their introduction to humanity, they did have a limited empathic ability allowing them to more quickly discover amenable mating partners. Rather than pheromones, they send mild 'distress' via mental wavelength that others might pick up on. They also trill-purr when in close proximity to interested potential mates, a way of making themselves distinctive when surrounded by various other kebbits sending out similar signals. The empathic ability is the dating app; the trilling is the equivalent of pickup lines and smooth conversation in person.

The empathic sense developed beyond this in response to being trapped, as well as beyond their own species. They hone in on other animals in the vicinity, avoiding those exuding predatory feelings. In this way, they mark where humans have been moving around near their burrows, and avoid that area for some time before eventually forgetting (provided the human doesn't stand next to or near their trap in wait.) They'll move their burrows if the "danger zone" is too close by. It's an imperfect adaptation to the human equation, but has allowed them to avoid being hunted into extinction.

However, they're not solely tuned into predatory intent. Should other creatures - even of the human variety - experience other emotional states, kebbits pick up on it, too. Sadness, loneliness, euphoria, all of these and more will be experienced by the kebbit. This includes those feelings associated with mating, as Quen and Raz discovered.

 

..........

 

Unicorns: 

 

I imagine all unicorns as having a common unicorn ancestor. This ancestor was omnivorous, territorial, and pragmatic. I like to think they originated in the Forinthry prior to its razing, and spread widely over Gielinor's surface as the Forinthry became overcrowded with them. Over time, as unicorns in different areas adapted to their various new environments, sub-species emerged in deference to the availability of food and the relative dangers of each area.

Post-razing, the unicorns that remained in the Forinthry (now Wildnerness) became a common ancestor for black unicorns, a shadhavar-esque animal with an exclusively carnivorous diet. Sinewy, sharp-toothed, frightening of visage, these were creatures with which one did not fuck.

From that common Forinthry unicorn came two variations of the black unicorn: those found in the Wilderness in the present day, which are nearly indistinguishable from their predecessors, and black unicorns found in the forests east of Rellekka.

Modern Forinthry Unicorns: Subsist on lesser demons and various animals found in their area - ground birds, burrowing animals, and others that rely on lush periods in what little scrub vegetation remains. They're also hunters of opportunity where unfortunate travelers are concerned. During these lush periods, Wilderness unicorns eat well and breed with an almost breathless freneticism, producing foals in excess of what's needed to maintain herd size and stability.

These foals serve two purposes. In addition to continuing the herd, they'd serve as a thread-check, an opportunity to pick the strongest/best suited to survival while thinning out any vulnerabilities - reluctance to hunt or fight, or any that get injured. Those found lacking served as a backup supply of food in times of scarcity; while certainly not ideal, they will cannibalize.

Their vocalizations are a spine-shitting cross between a scream and a screech. They do have a rudimentary magic miasma-manipulating ability, their horns operating as wands to emit short bursts. They use this when attacking trespassers into herd territory, but cease with that and use the horn as a skewer if the interloper has been targeted as potential food during a food drought.

Rellekkan black unicorns: Are somewhat less dangerous in comparison to to their Wilderness cousins. They don't cannibalize, nor do they regard human intrusion into their territory as a possible food source. They are still carnivorous, however, and will monch squirrels and foxes and shit. Might take on a bear if they're really hungry, but it's risky.

White unicorns: Are fairly docile, common to forested areas. Obligate vegetarians, the most they ever do is go Salad Shooter on a tree. Teeth are comparable to real-world horse ones, big square things for mowing down flora, but there are still a few sharp ones like vestigial elements from the old common equine ancestor.

These also do not organize into herds, but spread thinly through forested areas. They aren't territorial, simply more solitary outside mating seasons. I imagine some attempt was made to domesticate them as beasts of burden and riding animals, but they invariably responded to being mounted to carts (or by people) by lunging horn-down into trees, getting stuck. The humans of the time took the hint and attempts to domesticate them stopped.

  
I imagine varying kinds of grey, brown, and spotted/speckled breeds that died off over the course of time, unable to handle rapid environmental changes or introduction of new predators.

Desert unicorns: Vegetarians which were eventually ousted by the better-equipped-for-desert-life camels, similarly tan and brown. These occasionally adopted herds of goats, regarding them as small, stupid unicorns. The goats finding themselves charges of a unicorn would be blessedly free of wolf attacks, but puzzled by the unicorn's attempts to nurse them.

Morytanian unicorns: Carrion-eaters, mostly grey or speckled in color. These died off thanks to ghasts.

 


	3. FotWG

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small coda of sorts for the longer implications of Razwan's story.
> 
> As a warning: this can (and probably should be) passed up on if you're the happy ending type. What's offered here isn't happy, or even remotely comforting. If you're somehow invested in Razwan and her fate, the information presented here will not be pleasant.
> 
> It's the truth of the matter, but it can be passed up entirely. This isn't part of the pseudo-worldbuilding lore present elsewhere in this WIP headcanon compendium. You won't lose much if you give this a miss. It's here because I don't like hiding the facts, but I don't recommend it if you have a difficult time with loss or unhappy endings.
> 
> Also, spoiler warnings for both events in her fics and for the conclusion of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

  
  


In the final scene of Stephen King’s seventh primary installment for his Dark Tower series, “The Dark Tower,” the reader is offered two endings.

In the first, Roland Deschain approaches the Tower, shy one Horn of Eld, stripped of his ka-tet, the artist companion he and Susannah Dean freed from Dandelo’s psychic trap driven gently away. The Crimson King has been rendered (or de-rendered, if you want to get technical) down to a pair of impotent red eyes. Those eyes stare on in silent fury as the gunslinger moves down the home stretch toward his goal, the latter exuding the same inexorable, patient power felt when King offers the first line of Deschain’s tale: 

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

This was King’s ideal ending. He doesn’t share many authors’ collective contempt for tales in which every last question isn’t answered by the final page. 

The journey was the thing. Deschain’s destination is virtually within arm’s reach. The “camera” pans up the winding path of Can’-Ka No Rey, over the field of red roses whose symbolic representation is as many-headed as a hydra beset by ignorant knights, to the thin and weathered frame of Roland, up to the linchpin of both the multiverse and - more importantly, really - Roland’s destiny. 

It was a good ending, I think. Let the reader imagine him laying the last artefact of Arthur Eld’s legacy at the door to the center of all things. Remembering Aunt Talitha. Let them imagine what might be inside those sooty walls. Let them imagine what becomes of all the worlds, the  _ Prim,  _ and Gan himself. Let them know just a bit of mystery.

However, King also knows his Constant Readers. Many would cry and rail. “What did he see? What rests at the top of the great spine of the multiverse? A mind? God? Gan? You  _ can’t leave us like this; we’ve been following this man for seven novels and we deserve it all!” _

And so he prefaced a second ending, one offering that TMI, with an entreaty. 

To let things be as they are. To allow mystery an opportunity to thrive. To, just this once, not replace wonderment with clinical understanding. To, just this once, let Oz’s curtain lay flat, for the show to go on without ripping apart the mechanism responsible for the Great and Powerful wizard’s fearsome visage.

That second ending? It had answers, I suppose.

I tried. I tried not to read beyond King’s plea to stop before the next few pages ripped curtain away, exposing both mortal wizard and comprehensible machine. Days went by. The book spent those days on a shelf, still with a bookmark protruding from the top like a tongue. Sometimes I walked by and didn’t even look at it.

Inevitably, I took the book back off the shelf. I opened it and went on. I was as drawn to destroy the unknown as Roland himself was determined to see what inhabited the top of the Tower. Had that ending not been offered, I would have been satisfied with the first, but I am a dull-witted creature bound to my nature. I will read to the last page. Never tempt me. I will never pass up the chance to disappoint.

For my inability, I and the other slaves to the exhausting pursuit of ultimate satisfaction were duly rewarded.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

I would love to say that, had I the chance to write myself a warning and send it back through time, that past-me would heed it. Would leave wonderment in place.

But I know better.

Razwan’s tale - in the linear sense, anyway - is done. Her story is no Dark Tower and I am no Stephen King, but the last fic offers a few promises. There will be room left to wonder. The biggest part of her journey will be complete, there will be some satisfaction, and there are some things I have neither intention of answering nor  _ ability _ to answer even if I’d been tempted. She will go with Sliske to the Shadow Realm’s heart, and she will know some peace.

If you’ve been waiting to get that Final Romantic Resolution scene between Razwan and Quen, I’m sorry. Maybe they do find that good, real, imperfection-laden kind of happiness. Maybe they never stop swinging wildly between “together” and “off in their respective corners, pouting.” Maybe they don’t last. I like to think it’s the pendulum-swing, and that time transforms that dance into their own screwy brand of reliability, a kind of cyclical security, but the fact of the matter is: I don’t know.

If you’ve somehow gotten invested in them, I’m sorry. We’re in the darkness together on that one.

_ But. _ But. There is an answer I’m willing - albeit reluctant - to provide here. I will give you the opportunity to waive mystery on this one thing.

And it’s not a small thing.

You don’t have to read on. You don’t have to know. It’s not a good answer. It’s not a happy one. You can stop right now and satisfy yourself with your own vision of how it goes on beyond that last fic. I won’t judge you. Hell, you can hold it over  _ my  _ head if you decide to stay away from what lay ahead. You can lord your willpower over my pathetic excuse for it, and - by Gan, Sliske, and Zamorak - I will celebrate with you.

If you do want to know, or if - like me - you’re a slave to that same destructive urge where mystery is concerned, I offer you an answer of sorts to one question:

In the first year A.O. (After Oreb), Razwan wonders what will happen when she dies or the Revision happens, and all the souls are stored away in the Underworld to wait for the next universe. It’s a reasonable thing to wonder. Her circumstances defy even partial states of undeath, like the kinds seen in wights or edimmu. That showdown wasn’t a clean getaway on the soul structure front.

Sliske has a soul all his own. Nomad has a soul of his own, with more souls clinging like barnacles to it. Razwan’s soul is a rigged patchwork of two incomplete ones, held together by blind luck and Elmer’s Anima.

Last chance. You can walk away.

...alright.

Sliske’s and Nomad’s souls eventually do find themselves in the Underworld. They go on, waiting, replaying events in their lives in whatever manner they desire. Together, more often than not. I can tell you that a conversation very much like the one between Razwan and Sliske took place between them. There comes understanding, a freeing, acceptance. Love. They will see the next Revision.

Razwan’s soul is too fractured to do the same.

When she dies, or when the next Revision hits, she will not go on. There’s not enough left of her soul to stay cohesive when it and her body divide upon death. Like everything else physical or semi-physical, anima won’t remain to keep her jigsaw pieces together, and - even now - that anima doesn’t recognize her as a living, souled being. It’s just there because it’s accumulated rapidly where the pieces met and gotten stuck. It’s the “my car’s held together with mud ‘n road salt” rural wisdom made proven theory, lucky physics for soul tatters that just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Death knows. Icthlarin knows. They no longer “see” her as they see others - living, dead, or undead, not even in the strange way the Mahjarrat and gods are seen. In the sights afforded them by their divine dominions, she became a non-entity when she first “died” below Sophanem’s pyramid. 

They share a pact never to tell her, and they mourn. Bitterly. It’s a fate new even to them, this inevitable dispersal of something into nothingness. Every conversation with her after the events in the Crossing reopens the wound, refuses them closure. Their living, breathing friend haunts them.

She has a long life ahead of her. That same quilted “soul” has given her a kind of static biological state, so she’s all done aging. She’s unlikely to die unless someone rips that soul off by the tethers or kills her. She isn’t invulnerable, but time’s teeth have been blunted.

In the context of this current universe iteration, she’s made out like a bandit, really, but there will be nothing for her save the small satisfaction that Oreb - what’s left of him - is doomed to fizzle away into that great goodnight just as she is.

They will finish perishing together. Razwan gets her revenge against him for taking her life the first time.

During her canon version of Endgame, she swore to pay the toll and prevent Zamorak from dying in the maze, from knowing the hellish afterlife foreseen for him by Death. In the complex weave of fate and interconnectedness mostly respected - but sometimes influenced - by witches, she was permitted a boon. Fate’s karmic quality is rarely that direct or visible, but it was in this instance, and Zamorak made it out of there.

Sliske, alone among Mahjarrat, will go forward into a brave new universe as the sole representative of a species unique to the last one.

All in all, if she could be asked, Razwan would consider it fair. Seeing Zanik’s Sisyphean struggle in the Underworld, knowing what fate awaited Zamorak if he’d died in Sliske’s maze, she knows there are worse things than simply ceasing to be.

Hate is the kindling. Rage is the fire. Fires never last.

I say sorry.


	4. Gods, Ogres, Eyes, and WG... Kaid?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts on Gielinor's gods, Ogre headcanons, some half-baked thoughts on why Razwan has Those Eyes, and some behind-the-scenes footage of what almost was.

**On Gielinor’s Gods:**

  
  


In Runescape’s canon lore, each of the gods represents a very specific idea, often boiled down to a single word. Guthix - balance. Zamorak - chaos. Saradomin - order. Armadyl - justice. Bandos - war. Seren - light. Zaros - fate/darkness. Marimbo - revelry. Brassica Prime - deliciousness. You also have various other gods - Icthlarin, Death, Xau-Tak, so on and so forth, who’ve claimed very specific duties/associations or sport ominous associations. Then there are the elder gods, those architects of existence, each of whom embodies (or acts in the capacity of) various simple creative concepts.

 

In the case of Elder, lesser, “comedy,” and mysterious Gods, that lore seems more or less adequate for Razwan’s canon. I may tweak some things at a later date, but - for now - what they have suits the ‘verse well enough.

 

However, with the Big Six (Seven?), that minimal explanation for what each god represents, prioritizes, or influences seems a little… dry, I guess? Or sparing, maybe. The expanded lore complicates things, but there are still boundaries around them that strike as rigid to me. It feels as though having one facet to a prominent god’s dominion makes them more susceptible to being boxed in. Or dismissed. Or categorized as a bland “good” or “evil.” Most of them have greyscale pasts, but none have escaped making poor decisions in their leadership positions.

 

That said, rather than outright refusing what’s in the lore, I like to think of that canon version of what the gods represent as a simplified one, a Reader’s Digest summary that better fits the mortal lens through which many of them are seen (or makes them more cross-culturally relatable). I like the idea that there’s more to the positions they fill, that each of them serves a wider symbolic/influential purpose in Runescape’s Grand Scheme of Things.

 

And so, some personal interpretations, observations, and Raz-’verse thoughts on ‘em.

 

**Zaros:** Is a very hands-off god, execution-of-power wise. For him to represent “fate” or “control” seems discordant with his relatively recent behavior as well as what he describes to be his early SOP, save some selective meddling to achieve his own ends. To your average mortal onlooker, that largely Empire-related meddling coupled with his overall projection of mystery probably begs the idea that there’s more going on with his involvement in their lives than can be seen at first glance. Add an emphasis on self-control, and “fate/control” makes sense from that perspective.

 

A different Zaros is seen during the events of Endgame, though. The only (or primary) architect of fate position he really serves is his own. How that impacts anyone else appears to be incidental to his ascension into Elder Godhood, despite his pleas to the contrary.

 

That in mind, I like to think of Zaros more as a symbol of ambition and the _drive_ toward self-determination. He’s unsatisfied with the considerable amount of power he wields. He’s willing to act in pursuit of more, even if it risks his promise to “bring advancement” to those supporting him. He may mean well in the interim, but anyone in his way or burdensome to that ascension goal ceases to factor into that promise. I suppose the mere fact that he’s pursuing more power from an already impressive seat is enough to make me (and very much so Razwan) suspicious, double that he’s actually headed a failed empire but is still convinced he’s “got it this time, guys! It’s totally in the bag, I swear,” but there you have it.

 

I also like the idea of him representing forethought and planning. He strikes me as one who’s rarely _truly_ caught off-guard. When he pulls a string to influence, it’s usually a small, subtle thing, cautious, moving like one who’s waiting for Mercury to stop going retrograde before he puts his stamp on it. He doesn’t barrel in and demand the World Guardian’s allegiance, doesn’t clamp down or try to finalize his holdings in that respect, but does a mixture of reasoning with them and dismissing some of their questions as having incomprehensible answers. More than a little of the latter struck me as patronizing, but again, this is what I took from it and want to apply to Raz’s ‘verse, not at all a statement of “how it should be/how it’s intended to be/is.”

 

**Seren:** Operates in extremity. Elves are her chosen group; there’s little or no interest in mortal life beyond that species. When their physiological addiction to her becomes clear, she rushes frantically through attempts to divest them of their addiction safely. When none prove fruitful, she shatters herself. (It could be a panicked last-ditch effort, an equally panicked self-sacrifice, or a furious or despair-driven “good enough for government work,” but in either case it seems at least partially out of frustration.) A goodish majority of her dialogue seems emotionally driven, too, and very often a height of emotion. It isn’t without reason, but much of it gave me the impression that she’s often propelled into action thanks to emotional investment in the right-now rather than, say, intuition or insight into the future.

 

(There’s discomfort on my part with that last, but that’s another can of spinach.)  
  
I like the idea of Seren being representative of the impassioned and immediate. Her sphere making sense to those who might go long stretches of free time having no idea what to do, then pouring out brilliance six hours before the deadline. Thriving under pressure. Though she herself is debatable on that front, I like the idea that Serenism would appeal to non-elf Serenists who are perfectly at home in that kitchen, thankya; the heat is just what we’re lookin’ for.

 

[For those who ever dipped into the show _House, MD,_ Seren would be the team responding to the Patient of the Week’s emerging symptoms and treading water, while Zaros is more Gregory House, suggesting dangerous tests and unorthodox (or downright unethical) methods of manipulating diagnostically critical information out of the patient or their families. While Serenist-like attending physicians theorize and apply things like chemotherapy given half the symptoms present, Zaros wanders off to stand on the roof for a while, maybe vandalizes the snack machine on his way up. Then he has an epiphany, rolls back into the patient’s room near the end of the episode, gives the patient a meaningful (smug) look, and asks, “do you know what a chestnut nut looks like?” Both important, but in vastly different ways, short-term and long.]

 

**Armadyl:** is a man who’s endured much. Loss of many of his people, loss of husbands, loss of connection _to_ the Aviansie courtesy of his ascension. He dismisses none of what’s come about as a result of his reluctance to make hard decisions. Guilt has been his companion, as has loneliness, a sense of _other_ about himself, the pain of loss.

 

Even more than “justice,” what comes to mind for me in conjunction with Armadyl’s name is _integrity._ He doesn’t pass the buck, doesn’t squirm when his share of blame is assigned. I like the fact that he acknowledges the complexity of situations and his part in them, but never dodges culpability or uses that complexity as an excuse. He doesn’t always make the right call; in fact, it could be argued that he _rarely_ makes the right call, but he always speaks of his mistakes and his hardships separately. He also seems to value kindness; even if you side with Zamorak, he doesn’t lay into you. There’s worry and a kind of weary disappointment, maybe, but he doesn’t verbally bludgeon you to death for your choices.

 

Razwan doesn’t judge him harshly. In fact, he’s the only god who inspires any kind of conflict in her way of thinking. She likes him, although he makes her acutely uncomfortable with herself, both on the Zamorak loyalty front and in terms of her own mixed ethics. Knowing that someone who’s fucked up can make her feel morally inferior is one hell of an _error.exe_ in her head, compounded by the fact that Armadyl isn’t trying to do any such a thing.

 

Facing one’s less palatable side, accountability, integrity, kindness, steadfastness, and honesty - all what I picture Armadyl representing beyond the “justice” tag.

 

**Bandos:** Simplicity. I know, I know, “Big High War God” being an embodiment of simplicity, big leap there. But I like the idea that his bloodlust was his expression of an Occam’s Razor-meets-don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff overarching philosophy. “I want to fight shit. It’s fun. It’s the simplest answer and it’s honest. Why do I need a tapestry of rationalizations for it?”

 

Though that philosophy presented largely in war for both himself and the majority of his followers, I like to imagine that at least a handful embraced that same shortest-distance-between-two-points concept in other things - love, smaller conflicts between people, indulging oneself without heaping on guilt or obsessing about moderation.

 

Two people arguing over property lines? Fuck it, let them have a fistfight in the mud until the two work out the pent-up resentment and can look at the thing for how serious (or not) it really is, divested of all the imagined accumulated affronts. Fancy someone? Tell ‘em directly. No bullshit, no trying to filter and half-communicate through proxies. Want a cupcake? Eat a cupcake. A lifestyle that doesn’t enjoy the benefits of nuance or social/conversational swordplay, but also absent the problems inherent in misunderstanding.

 

**Saradomin:** Though I think Jagex did a fine job in not duplicating faiths of the real world, there are certain qualities and focuses - namely, the concept of “light/righteousness” being impressed upon mortals by a somewhat imperious male figure in a white beard, an image reminiscent of Michelangelo’s _Creazione di Adamo -_ that lend to comparisons being drawn.

 

On the aesthetic side of things, I stuck with the Saradomin I saw during The World Wakes - a narrow, sculpted visage that brought to mind images of fae aristocrats and ice elves. Though the artistry in his newer form is by no means unpleasant, there’s a big part of me that craves a little less Michelangelo, a little more _daoine sídhe_.

 

(As an aside - I do imagine many humans of Teragard were/are more akin in appearance to that older version of Saradomin’s in-game model: lithe, taller on average, sharp of feature, delicate in comparison to their Gielinor counterparts. Almost elfin. Anyway, I’ll save going on about this for another entry since that headcanon’s still in the liquid Jell-O stage. Onward!)

 

I imagine the base of Saradominism to be a reverence for “order” as it’s seen in the natural world - the wasteless efficiency found in honeycomb design, the relatively predictable formation of crystal, the fractal elements found in frost-laced windows, the arrangements of birds in flight which create simplified silhouettes of larger birds in the sky. The philosophy elevates this type of order as a goal; life itself springs forth from chaos and change, changes with alterations in the environment, but always seeks a pattern.

 

As a result, I like to think Saradominism had its “hippie” stage before the scope narrowed to sentient races’ behaviors. Druid types devoting their lives to the study of patterns and organization in nature. Symbolism derived from it.

 

In the overall, Saradomin represents that gravity order holds for life and physical forces. Structure, organization, stability, repetition, patterns. Getting things on an even keel and keeping them there. It sits nicely in my head given Saradomin’s history.

 

**Zamorak:** Enjoys that two-sides-of-a-common-coin with Saradomin. Whereas life seeks patterns and regulation, change is also the engine of adaptation. Order is very easily disrupted, and _should_ be, or a species too heavily reliant upon the unchanging dies out every time a stray change in weather occurs. Life would be wiped off the board every time the planet cut the volcanic cheese.

 

And so, chaos. But also disruption, change, struggle, and perseverance. I’ve borrowed some of the hale, hearty mindset of Star Trek’s (think TNG/DS9/Voyager) Klingons to flesh out the way the philosophy’s impacted the people who subscribe to it, too. Lots of cheerful notions of honor and glory, but with Kahless’s admonition that such things should never be (Bandosian) without purpose. Gaining strength via facing fears, obstacles, challenges. Never sitting on one’s laurels. Achieving, telling the tale over a _gagh-_ laden table and mugs of bloodwine, then getting up the next morning and locking horns with something new.

 

**Guthix:** Is, oddly enough, the god I’ve had most difficulty in deciding what to do with. Probably because “balance” is such a broad concept with endless definitions. It’s subject to vast differences based on what people consider to be the division between it and _im_ balance.

 

He’s also difficult to contend with because much of that “balance” is simply _laissez-faire_ Saradominism. He seems (seemed, say sorry) to regard the gods and their influence as inherently antithetical to balance, despite the relative balance in their respective philosophies. One god’s influence would rise and the others’ wane, and as time progressed that one god would fall in strength or support to another. There’s no justification given as to why “mortals-only club” definition of balance is the correct one, but it’s certainly a more orderly situation than allowing both gods and mortals to remain.

 

Saradomin himself, after Guthix’s death, saw much of his ideas in Guthix’s. His comment after Zilyana’s cheerful “hey, look, Captain Roadblock’s gone!” implied agreement with Guthix’s ideas save Saradomin’s being bounced out of the Gielinor Club alongside the rest.

 

And so, although I did toy with the other gods’ systems and representations a little, I think Guthix can stay about how he is (was) in canon. His philosophy will likely be the most diversely interpreted, too. “Balance,” and whatever the merry hell people scribble in the margins.

  
  


**On Ogres:**

  
  


So I, uh, maybe took the “cartoon cavepeople” frame ogres were shoved into and. Y’know.

 

_sounds of paper ripping and being scattered_

 

I like the idea of them having a very rapid almost-evolution to new climates. Like, within hours of being there. Chameleons, but for their respiratory and other bodily systems. Forest? Jungle? Underwater. Got it, fam.

 

"Welp, this is water."

"Yep. Give me a minute, think I can breathe this."

"Dope. Hey, is Dragu peeing in the..."

"DRAGU! YOU GO OUT THERE AND YOU DO THAT ON THE LAND LIKE A CIVILIZED OGRE!"

[Cut to Xau-Tak rising from the water and screaming, “STOP GOING PEEPEE IN THE OCEAN!” This is the only “headcanon” I’ve got with relation to Xau-Tak for the moment, so there’s that.]

 

I'm also thinking that the simplistic speech patterns seen in-game aren't a sign of lack of intelligence, but that ogres are not normally verbally inclined. I imagine they have an infinitely more nuanced system of gestures - a sign language, but with room for interpretation and subtle variations that lend intensity and situational meaning. By comparison, vocalizing just seems... bland to them? Toneless, and vocalizations strike them more like background noise than an actual primary means of communicating. The gesturing language is complex, but also extremely concise.

 

Speech feels unwieldy, and is simply exhausting to focus on. They’re not really strong in the auditory processing department.

 

Running into humans and just mentally, "yeah, thanks for the eight-minute speech, but I could've signed that in about thirty seconds and saved us all a fuckton of time. Why do you communicate like this? It's fucking awful."

 

So, when they do speak, it's grudging and minimal.

  
  


**Magic is Bullshit: Electric Boogaloo:**

  
  


My take on Mahjarrat physiology: they’re made of a mixture of magic miasma (this from the first magic installment in this headcanon masterpost deal), magic-responsive minerals, magic-responsive tissues, and assorted materials relevant to their basic living functions and shapeshifting abilities.

 

When they’re shapeshifting, a lot of this building block shit goes kinda… loose. Also true when a Mahjarrat gets all gift-y exchange-y with a human, read: Sliske and Razwan.

 

They’ve had a few exchanges that resulted in what Raz has going on internally now. Sans jargon I could probably paste into the idea and probably give a biology expert serious cramps, basically: she’s got a few shots of Sliske settled into her system.

 

And, for most humans, that’d be fine. Like the smell of durian fruit, most people will eventually excrete/sweat/whatever it on out, if given time.

 

But Razwan can’t. She’s got the Mahjarrat-materials equivalent of Wilson’s Disease. She cant sweat it, shit it, or shed it. Instead, some of it is permanently absorbed-gathered in various parts of her - some throughout her system which allows her to do her fun Shadow Realm deals and renders her largely immune to shadow magic as an attack, some around the fingernail beds which allows her to focus that shadow manipulation with her hands, and most the rest has gathered in her eyes.

 

The first round gave her the equivalent of Kayser-Fleischer rings, or accumulated Sliskestuff in gold rings around her irises. The second round gave her almost solid amber-gold irises, and the last (and most intense round) saw her accumulating so much that she has, effectively, Mahjarrat eyes. The glow, and the absorbent counterpart (like vantablack) in the pupils that allows the “glow” to read into low-light areas but not impede on her overall vision. The remainder of the absorbent material collected in her sclerae, too. Since Mahjarrat and human basic designs aren’t _too_ dissimilar, the residue in her eyes recognizes “eyes” and clings where it gathered, attempting to reconfigure what they’ve found into what they know.

 

So that’s why the eyes. Fun fact: a few years down the road, she gets a little hint of claws. ‘Cause I can.

  
  


**Razwan Almost Razwasn’t:**

  
  


If you like odd little behind-the-scenes tidbits (and damned if I’m not free as hell with the shit): Razwan wasn’t going to be my World Guardian when I first started dancing with the idea of writing fanfiction for Runescape.

 

I had, in fact, begun processing Kaid Ir-Dal - one of my two Djinnbound project protagonists - from world:build to world:Gielinor. A fair amount of lore had been prepped for him, and he would’ve been a vastly different sort of WG-critter from Raz.

 

  * He would’ve been godless (small ‘g’). Seen value in a little of all the gods’ philosophies, but found none of their sources adequate to the task of ruling. He would’ve thought Zamorakianism respectable in basis, but Zamorak himself unsettling. Saradominism less appealing, but would’ve respected the man (god) despite that disinclination. And probably played weekly “we do not discuss politics or other gravid issues” games of chess with him. The only full dislikes would’ve been Bandos/ianism (pointless antagonism and zero finesse) and Zaros/ianism (largely courtesy of his encounters with Azzanadra - notably the “not bad for a human” attitude and that revelation about his ugly attitude towards Char. One does not simply put a bigot in the most authoritative position in a society and expect Kaid to regard the one making that call as anything else.)



 

  * He would’ve been a hand-to-hand melee fighter, monk-style. Perhaps guard-level familiar with physical weapons, but his own expertise would’ve been in barefisted martial arts of some stripe.



 

  * He would’ve been Menaphite, which would’ve required some timeline-finagling since the city’s closure wouldn’t jibe well with his getting out and about into Gielinor’s quests. An investigator with the city’s police occasionally loaned out to other significant areas in the Kharidian region - including Al Kharid, which would’ve started him on that questline.



 

  * His interactions with Sliske would’ve been vastly different from Razwan’s, too. Whereas Raz is susceptible to Sliske’s charms, Kaid would tend to approach his antics with his usual reservoir of calm, treating it all the way a supportive parent might a creative child. He’d been involved in DaT solely to keep Sliske from doing the Stone of Jas equivalent of putting compact discs in microwaves “for art.”



 

  * The Fremennik questline wouldn’t have involved any marriage, politically convenient or otherwise. He has no use for the concept or the implications thereof, and equally none for romance. He would’ve had an amicable sexual relationship with Manni the Reveller, though, and he’d have been touched by the Fremennik’s willingness to welcome him into their lives post-Trials.



 

  * A mixture of that Fremennik experience and his exposure to Zaros’s selective secrecy would’ve been two pivotal character development points - forcing him to reexamine his tendency toward walling people out of his life.



 

I still enjoy imagining the different track my WG-’verse series would’ve taken with Kaid. Still, once Razwan showed up at my mental doorstep with swords strapped in and a lot to tell me on the subjects of Nomad, Sliske, Guthix, Zamorak, and the benefits of a good bottle of rum, I was sold. Kaid’s got enough on his hands on Suldea, anyway.


End file.
